Beyond Nautilus
by Moonjade65
Summary: Kent Mansley contemplates what's happened in Rockwell, Maine while in jail. One-shot.


_I really screwed up this time._

The walls of the jail cell were a pale, bluish gray. Kent hadn't expected them to be so welcoming and so soft; they were much unlike the harsh, bleak, and somewhat placid walls he had expected to be surrounded by as he simmered in his failure. There was even a window that was criss-crossed by cheap pig iron from which Kent could glimpse the dome of Capitol Hill.

Kent ran his hands through his hair and sighed. His shoulders seemed to be weighed down by an invisible force– a mixture of aging emotions and thoughts, perhaps. His frigid gaze traveled up from the concrete floor and rested on the waist of his only company, a guard, upon which a gun holster was heady with lead and cobalt steel.

"Are you authorized to use that?" Kent asked in a meek tone that surprised him. The guard glanced at him from over his shoulder, and his green eyes clashed with blue of everything.

"Only if necessary," he replied. Another surprise was the guard's steady, unassuming voice. Kent closed his slightly open mouth, sighed through his nose this time, and clasped his hands together. Absently he checked the time.

It was late; or it was early, depending on one's perception. Three thirty-seven, he determined. Or maybe it was four thirty-seven? Kent blinked the sleep from his eyes. It didn't matter. Slowly he arose from his subtle hunch and crossed his legs.

_I really screwed up_, he repeated to himself. _But I was so_ close _this time..._ Kent noticed that his hands had balled up into trembling fists, and instantly released them. For no reason he checked his watch again. Three, no, four forty.

There was a stretch of silence that was so deep and clear Kent nearly thought he could hear Sputnik beeping over head.

Something nudged him, something fell, and something sounded like coins spiraling down a wood table. The beeping faded. Kent sat up and craned his neck a bit. A sharp gasp escaped him, and the guard gave him a blank look.

"Look!" Kent hissed, pointing a slender finger through the bars. The guard frowned when it brushed his elbow and rolled his eyes. But the thing he saw was gone; all that faced them was the pale blue glow of fluorescent lights. Kent withdrew his hand and raked it down his face, as if doing so would drain him of his fear.

After a while, though, his terror abandoned him.

Kent rubbed his thin watch-less wrist. He had imagined it. Nothing could have survived that blast. General Rogard had told him so, as the missile traced a white trail through the red sky...

Something stirred deep within him. He didn't like the feeling. Kent glanced at his watch much too quickly to tell the time, and turned back to the guard.

"Do you think you could get me my pipe?" he asked, a false smile and joviality pervading his being. "I'm a little jittery, so I think I need a smoke." The guard grunted something along the lines of "I'll be back" and left. In the few seconds he was gone Kent convinced himself he really did need a smoke.

Soon he was, as planned, smoking, taking a few puffs from his pipe and letting out a hazy white cloud from his lips. The guard coughed a little, and it was clear his hatred for Kent was growing.

"I was going to be somebody, you know," Kent said after a while. His words were heavy and smooth with remorse, tobacco, and self-satisfaction.

"Yeah?" the guard huffed in return. Kent nodded.

"I was a secret agent, and all that implies." He took in a long breath with a smug smile. "I kept the people of this nation calm in the face of terror."

The guard, a quiet and insofar attentive sentinel, belted laughter that made Kent's smile disappear.

"Oh, that's a _riot_!" he hollered. There was a faint complaint further down the hall that was drowned out by further laughter. Kent couldn't hear either noises on account of the fact all he could hear was blood rushing through his ears.

"The man in for the Rockwell fiasco, keeping America _calm_!"

In order to save his pipe from his grating teeth, Kent pulled it from his mouth. Smoke spread out around his cell like a slow moving web, threading around lazily. Kent's eyes seemed to glow from behind the haze, hard with anger.

"What would you have done, huh, _champ_?" he spat. "I was acting in the people's best interest!"

"The people's best interest is _nuclear holocaust_?" the guard retorted. Kent fell silent, reclining on his shoddy cell bench, and put his pipe back in his mouth. A scowl tugged at the corner of his mouth as the guard walked off chuckling. He would be back, Kent knew, and when he was he'd set him straight.

_I was in the right_, he thought. _Everything was lining up, except..._ Kent's brow furrowed and his eyes blinked rapidly. The 'something' from earlier began festering in its deep crevice; it was lodged somewhere between his heart and his diaphragm, and made the former organ shudder as it pumped.

A cold flash washed over him like an unexpected high tide.

_I almost killed all of those people._

He quickly raked a hand through his hair, and quick breath drawing into his lungs. Kent coughed and sputtered a little as smoke scorched his throat, but the guilt remained.

"I almost _killed _them," he said aloud, frightened with the sudden acceptance he had for it. Slowly his frantic fear from realization began to fade.

_But that wasn't _my _fault_. His shoulders loosened up a bit. _The giant changed position!_ That's _the only reason my plan didn't work!_ A smug, small, and self-comforting smile crept onto his face. When the guard returned he snorted at Kent's rediscovered self-righteousness.

"Looks like that phone call you made while you were crying payed off," the guard muttered. "Somebody paid your bail." The guard opened Kent's cell unceremoniously. Kent waited a moment before he stood up slowly and walked out. He grabbed his belongings as he was on his way out and then–

And then he was free.

Kent checked his watch again. Six o'clock sharp. _Where did the time go?_ He checked the horizon. The sun was beginning to peek over the horizon and looked like a melting square of butter squatting on a stack of pancakes. Kent gnawed the corner of his lip absently. Mrs. Annie Hughes sure could cook... She was the only good thing to reside in Rockwell, Maine, he decided.

With a gust of cold winter wind the imaginary smells of the Hughes' kitchen was replaced with the harsh scents of the city. Kent adjusted his fedora and started toward his office building at a slow pace.

Washington was busier than he remembered. Glistening rows of cars scuttled forward on the paved roads and looked like beetles hunched over on whitewall tires, rolling on and on, with minimal breaks in their ranks. Kent only picked up his brooding walk speed to cross roads.

_I was so close_, he told himself again. _So much time doing nothing and finally I had a _good _case_! He balled the hand he had in his pocket as if he were about tear it from his coat. _The next Roswell, New Mexico, right in front of me! And that boy..._ His eyes narrowed. _Hogarth... No, _all _of them, they all ruined me..._

The sound of a dial tone interrupted Kent's inner monologue. Apparently he had knocked a pay phone off of it's handle. The logistics of said action didn't make sense to Kent, but regardless it had happened. He glared at the black plastic of the speaker-receiver apparatus for much too long. Then he promptly picked it up and, with unnecessary force, slammed it back into its proper place.

"Damn phone," he snarled.

After a few more minutes of walking, a squat, gray, and standardly boring building came into view as Kent rounded a corner. Above it's entrance hung a simple iron sign with the words "Bureau of Unexplained Phenomena". This was the building where Kent had spent time filing reports, taking calls, and brown nosing his way to promotions. He had returned to the little place only to clear out his cubicle.

Kent winced a bit as the sharpness of his demotion came back like a slap to the face. But that would have been much better than where he was now: out of a job, and most certainly out of Washington.

The B.U.P. building was refreshingly cool on the inside. Kent didn't bother to remove his hat. He had little in his cubicle, so he wouldn't be in there for very long. No one was there to greet him, as no one worked there any longer. At least, for the moment. With the discovery of the Giant came a new use for government money: the communication with creatures from the heavens. Most of the B.U.P. department was on paid vacation while the office was being renovated for its new purpose.

However, Kent did not know this. So when he looked up and faced the empty collection of cubicles, he saw only a reflection of himself. His fist fell limp, the knuckles white and sore. All of his immediate anger had burned off.

"They _ruined_ me," he mumbled. "And now I'm nothing." He stood in the entrance way for a while. A light bulb buzzed quietly above him. Leather seats puffed back up, finally working off the dents their owners left in them over the weekend. He stood there for nearly half an hour.

Kent's rage had cooled and hollowed him out, like a collapsed star. There was nothing else to say, nothing else to do. He had screwed up, learned nothing, and that was that. With dull blue eyes, he went over to his desk and started putting what remained there into his coat pockets; he didn't take much with him to work.

The sound of a door opening made him drop everything.

A young woman had walked in, wearing a plain suit and being the owner of a plain face. She looked to be just a tad older than Kent himself. Kent saw not a government agent but a civilian in her. The misconception was mutual.

"Oh," she chirped. "Sorry, didn't mean to frighten you. Do you work here?" Kent hurriedly picked his things up and straightened out from his hunch.

He opened his mouth to speak, the word "yes" nearly slipping out. But he caught himself, wincing as he did so. He looked down at his back, and then back at the woman.

"No. Not anymore," he clarified. The woman didn't pry. She simply held the door as Kent walked out.


End file.
